Exposed: Union bosses splurged members’ cash on Vegas casinos and fine dining

The leaders of a railway trade union spent thousands of pounds of members’ money at a Las Vegas casino during an all-expenses-paid trip, according to a leaked dossier seen by The Telegraph.

Senior officials at the Transport Salaried Staff Association (TSSA) – including Manuel Cortes, the general secretary at the time – racked up £8,500 in expenses claims during a visit to the US city in 2022.

Bills claimed back on expenses in Vegas and on other trips during Mr Cortes’s tenure included four-figure casino and hotel invoices, dinners at restaurants offering roast suckling pigs big enough to feed six people, and transatlantic flights in business class.

Mr Cortes also withdrew hundreds of dollars in cash ahead of the Vegas trip, paid for by the union.

Revelations about the level of expenses-linked spending by TSSA’s bosses and wider apparent financial mismanagement will raise questions about how the union was run during Mr Cortes’s time as general secretary.

TSSA has more than 17,000 members working in the “administrative, managerial and professional” sectors of Britain’s rail companies. Each pays up to £25 a month for membership. In return, they receive the backing of TSSA in disputes with their employers and access to legal support.

The disclosures will also raise fears that instead of TSSA’s money being spent on looking after members, it is being diverted for the personal enjoyment of those at the top of the union.

Forensic accountants traced all spending by senior TSSA officials after five of the union’s senior managers were suspended in 2023 over allegations of bullying and sexual harassment.

They discovered that between 2017 and 2022, Mr Cortes claimed a total of £75,000 in expenses and spending on his union credit card. Over the same period, his TSSA wages totalled more than £550,000, plus a further £115,000 in pension contributions.

During 2022, the Labour-affiliated union oversaw Britain’s largest rail strikes in three decades, with 20 days of industrial action that caused misery for tens of millions of passengers.

Steve Coe, a former TSSA assistant general secretary who retired in 2022, called on Mr Cortes to repay any wrongfully claimed expenses. He said: “This is members’ money and they expect their money to be spent on their interests, not feathering the nests of senior officials within TSSA.”

A copy of the accountant’s report into the TSSA’s finances, dated July 2023 and comprising hundreds of pages of detailed expenses claims, credit card statements, invoices and contracts, has been seen by The Telegraph. This is what the investigation found.

The Las Vegas visit and the deal that never was

The Las Vegas casino visit was one of a string of concerns raised by forensic accounting firm HW Fisher.

The trip, in August 2022, came about at a time when the TSSA was fearful about its future. Covid, declining membership, falling incomes and Boris Johnson’s wipe-out of Labour in the 2019 general election suggested that the Left-wing union’s future was bleak, insiders said.

So its bosses decided to try to merge with an American trade union, the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers (IBB), beginning a series of all-expenses-paid trips to the US.

Mr Cortes made an eight-day visit to America that spring, followed by five weeks of further trips between late July and September.

On the Vegas trip, HW Fisher’s accountants found that Mr Cortes charged a £1,175 bill at The Mirage Hotel & Casino to his union credit card. Expenses racked up on his union credit card also included £485.70 at the Heathrow branch of Travelex, and £466 over three days on meals at the Coeur D’Alene resort in Idaho.

Casino chips for gambling generally cannot be bought on a credit card and it is unclear how Mr Cortes spent the four-figure sum while at the resort.

He also expensed £39.99 at the Vyne Tasting Room, an “interactive pour-it-yourself wine journey” at Seattle-Tacoma airport.

Also on the trip was Bernard “Mick” Carney, the TSSA president. Mr Carney racked up total claims of £1,235, along with a further £4,250 for a Virgin Atlantic business class flight that was bought for him (and expensed) by Frank Ward, the union’s deputy general secretary.

However, HW Fisher uncovered a letter from the IBB dated two days before the Vegas trip, stating that a merger was “simply not possible between our two unions”.

TSSA members were not told the merger had been called off until after the delegation had returned to Britain and had filed a total of £8,411 in expense claims between them.

A letter obtained by the accountants, dated August 25, 2022, and sent to Cortes by Newton B Jones, the international president of the IBB, said: “Unfortunately, it does not appear we will be able to reach an agreement, and a merger is simply not possible between our unions.”

Mr Cortes’s colleagues still travelled to the US on August 27 anyway, the auditors found.

Suckling pig restaurant and £1,000 Italian meal

Food and drink were a recurring theme of the TSSA bosses’ expenses claims.

Between March 1 and March 8, 2022, Mr Cortes spent £648 in Florida while meeting IBB representatives. This included a total of £538 at Bodega Olé.

A Spanish restaurant, the bodega’s menu includes a whole roasted pig (“serves six people”) priced today at $380, or £285.

At the union’s 2022 annual conference, Mr Ward expensed nearly £1,000 at an Italian restaurant in Sheffield called Vito’s.

Diners at Vito’s can buy a Chianina T-bone steak for £140, while the wine list includes a bottle of Barolo Sperss DOCG Gaja for £1,700.

The deep dive

On top of the all-expenses-paid Las Vegas trip, the dossier also revealed a years-long catalogue of waste and mismanagement within the TSSA under Mr Cortes’s leadership.

HW Fisher said in its report: “Dinner expenses were frequently incurred in excess of TSSA guidelines. Alcohol was regularly charged and reimbursed. In certain instances, no invoice was provided.”

The auditors added: “Credit card costs incurred for 2021-2022 appear to have been incurred without the correct submission of expense forms, supporting documentation and authorisation. For several direct expenses, no documentation was provided.”

Mr Coe highlighted a motion passed at the union’s 2023 annual meeting, calling on the TSSA executive committee to ensure that any “criminal wrongdoing” linked to “the management of the Association’s financial affairs” is “put in the hands of the police”.

Referring to the forensic accountants’ report, Mr Coe said: “It seems that the current leadership has failed completely to act on this damning deep dive.”

Gagging order and topless Zoom call

The auditors also found that TSSA spent £750,000 on non-disclosure agreements and associated legal costs over five years, with payouts to more than 20 people being noted by the auditors.

One of the subjects of those gagging orders, Claire Laycock, a former full-time TSSA organiser, brought the sexual harassment scandal to public light when she spoke to the press in 2022 about how Mr Cortes had tried to kiss her after a Christmas party.

Mr Cortes denied any wrongdoing and apologised for any hurt caused by his behaviour.

Her breach of the gagging order set in motion a series of events that led to Mr Cortes and his top lieutenants being suspended, and the appointment of HW Fisher to unravel the union’s finances.

The TSSA spent £50,000 fighting the case in the High Court, a sum revealed for the first time today.

Mr Cortes was ultimately fired and had his union membership revoked, although the trade union regulator is set to rule this week on whether he should be reinstated as a member.

After his sacking, Mr Cortes launched an appeal which was heard by the union’s annual conference in Cork. It took a bizarre turn when he removed his shirt and appeared topless on a Zoom call while awaiting delegates’ decision on his future.

£2m for printers that never arrived

Mr Ward, the deputy general secretary, was not just purchasing business-class flights for his colleagues to go to America. He spent £200,000 refitting the ground floor of TSSA’s headquarters to serve as a print room, while turning down £25,000 in rental income from businesses keen to rent floorspace in the City of London location.

Sources said he had a “dream” of the print shop serving both the union itself and Left-wing political organisations and candidates who would pay TSSA for the privilege.

“A print workshop for the entire movement? Bulls---, right? Because we’re all going digital,” said one insider.

None the less, Mr Ward committed TSSA to spending more than £1.9m over six years renting printers for his new shop.

Costs to the union ballooned from £10,000 every three months to “over £80,000 per quarter under the current agreement”, according to HW Fisher.

Auditors said: “The agreements do not include any break clauses,” adding that the new printers rented by Mr Ward “have never been delivered to TSSA” and that the union was “still using equipment provided under a prior agreement”.

Special pay rise for deputy general secretary

One of the most senior union officials was also given a higher pay rise than other staff, seemingly without it being officially signed off by the finance department.

HW Fisher discovered that Mr Ward had secured a “separate offer” of 1.5 per cent in 2020, 1.5 per cent in 2021 and 6.1 per cent the following year.

Other TSSA staff were paid 1.5 per cent, 1.3 per cent and 6 per cent respectively.

“TSSA have been unable to confirm that this additional amount, being the increase in excess of RPI, was authorised,” HW Fisher’s report said.